


Stuck

by Katblu42



Series: Wheel of Whump spin stories [2]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Mostly Fluff, Not really whump, Young Tracys (Thunderbirds)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 15:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30074655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katblu42/pseuds/Katblu42
Summary: Second spin of the wheel gave me Imprisonment and Stairs for Alan.Once again my muse turned more towards fluff than whump, and insisted on young Tracys.(Gordon also may have snuck in here somehow.)
Series: Wheel of Whump spin stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212689
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Stuck

“Scott!” the little voice called.

 _Ignore it,_ Scott thought to himself, _this assignment is important._

“Scott-ie!” This time louder and in a sing-song tone.

Scott closed his eyes and tried to shut out the insistent calls. _Ignore it and he’ll go and find someone else._ Except only one other brother was home and he was probably still asleep. _Ignore it. Maybe he’ll get bored and give up._ Opening his eyes again with a sigh he tried to focus on his history essay.

“Scott?”

He sat up straighter, every fiber of him now on high alert. The voice was quieter but somehow more urgent, having an almost whimpering edge to it.

“Alan?” he called back. “Are you okay?”

“Scottie, I’m stuck.”

Fast as lightning Scott was up from his seat and out of his Dad’s office where he had shut himself away in an effort to get his work completed in peace. He didn’t have to go far to find his baby brother, who had begun to cry. He was sitting near the top of the stairs with his head protruding between two of the banister spindles, hands tightly clasping a spindle on each side of his red face, tugging desperately to try and free himself.

“Allie! Calm down, stay still, okay?” Scott stood where Alan could see him, trying to keep his own heartbeat from pounding in his ears at the sight of his distressed brother. Alan stopped struggling and glistening blue eyes that had been tightly scrunched shut opened and latched onto the promise of safety found in the matching blue eyes of his big brother. “Take a deep breath for me.”

Alan did as he was told, eyes firmly fixed on Scott, who also took a deep breath in, then slowly out. Scott repeated the slow inhale and exhale, with Alan copying him, calming them both.

“That’s better,” Scott soothed. “Now, I’m gonna come up there and get you out, but first I need to get something from the kitchen, okay?”

“Okay,” Alan managed, only a slight waver in his voice.

“I’ll be right back.”

As promised Scott was only gone from Alan’s sight for a moment before returning and racing up the stairs.

“Okay, Allie. We’re gonna try something, but if it doesn’t work I don’t want you to worry because there’s another way to get you out, okay?”

“Okay.” The amount of pure trust in that quiet reply almost made Scott falter.

“I’m gonna spread some of this around your ears, and the sides of your head to make it slippery, and I’ll put some on the spindles too.”

“What is it?” the little one asked, screwing up his nose anticipating an unpleasant answer.

“It’s just butter,” his biggest brother reassured him, “just like we spread on your sandwiches.”

“Oh, okay.”

As Scott worked at slathering globs of butter on his baby brother’s head, he asked how Alan had wound up in this predicament. After all, the five-year-old should know better.

“I wanted to know where you were, but you told me to stay upstairs and I knew you’d get mad at me if I came down, so I tried to see where you were from up here, but I couldn’t see enough, so I thought maybe I could see more if I put my head through here, and . . .”

“And you got stuck.” Alan’s words had come out in such a fast-paced tumble Scott almost felt the need to remind him to breathe. Instead he just kept his voice and his actions calm. By the time the torrent of words had ceased Alan had been on the brink of shedding more tears, but the quiet, gentle calm Scott was steadfastly maintaining was enough to soothe him.

Having spread butter liberally on both Alan and the stair spindles, Scott wiped his hands on the kitchen towel he’d grabbed along with the tub of butter.

“Alright, Allie, we’re going to try and get your head back through here.” Scott indicated the gap between the spindles just under the banister, where the gap was widest due to the shape of the turned wood.

Alan had to raise himself up a little as Scott helped try to ease his slippery head between the bars imprisoning his little brother, paying particular attention to his ears. The two of them tried various angles, re-positioning this way and that to try and gently squeeze Alan’s head back through the narrow gap. A few times it seemed they were close only to have Alan whimper in pain. Each time they stopped Scott worried that Alan would end up bruised and battered by the process, but the other option had its difficulties, and this way out was preferable if it didn’t take too long.

Alan’s ears were starting to hurt, he didn’t like the greasy feeling of the butter smeared all over his head and he was beginning to wonder whether he’d be stuck there forever, but his big brother wasn’t panicking, so neither would he. Scott had promised him that there was a way to get him out, and when Scott made a promise he knew he could trust it. Scott would fix it.

“How’re you doing, Allie?” Scott asked him. “I know it hurts, but we were really close that time. Do you want to give it one more try?”

He took a deep breath, the top of his nose creased and his brow crinkled into an expression Scott recognised as his scowl of fierce determination.

“I’m ready. Let’s do it,” Alan declared with such attitude Scott had to stifle a fond laugh.

After a count of three, with Scott helping with angles and ear-wrangling, Alan grunted and gritted his teeth through the painful squeeze and suddenly he was free, crashing back into the arms of his big brother. Both of them sat there for a moment, breathing hard, Scott’s arms wrapped protectively around Alan, holding him safely against his chest.

“Good job, Sprout. Everything okay?”

Alan ran his hands over his head, rubbing his ears and smearing butter all over his hands in the process. Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be, and nothing was really hurting.

“I’m okay, Scott.” He turned and smiled up into a concerned frowny face that quickly softened into a smiling expression full of relief and love.

“You did way better than Gordon did when he got stuck,” Scott said with a laugh.

“Gordon got stuck in the stairs too?”

“Yep. The first time Virgil managed to get him out the same way we got you out, but it took ages and Gordon cried the whole time. I don’t think Mom and Dad ever found out about that one, but the second time . . .”

“He got stuck twice?!” The look of wide-eyed incredulity on Alan’s face made Scott snort with laughter.

“Yeah. The first time he was about three years old, but the second time he was six or seven, and he was _really_ stuck. After half an hour Virgil was just about ready to grab a hand saw from the toolshed to cut out one of the spindles, but then Mom came home and she got him out in less than a minute.”

“What did she do?”

“Well, Gordon had got himself stuck much closer to the bottom of the staircase, so Mom showed him how to twist sideways, get his shoulder between the spindles and squeeze out forwards through the spindles where Virgil could help him out and down onto the floor.”

Alan sat processing all this information for a moment. He was glad Scott hadn’t suggested going through the bars forward at the height he’d been stuck – it was a long way down to the floor from here.

“We don’t have to tell Gordon about this, do we?” Alan asked.

“Nope. We’ll get everything cleaned up – including you – and it will be our secret.”


End file.
